Minimal Flask Application for RESTful APIs

This repository offers a minimal Flask application for RESTful APIs and can help you to quickly set up a REST API.

The following features are included in the application:

• Usage of endpoint blueprints
• Automated endpoint tests via pytest
• Production configuration for uwsgi
• API documentation using the OpenAPI 3 specification and Swagger UI

For more information, read my blog post on Flask APIs.

Setup

To set up the application, you need Python 3. After cloning the repository change to the project directory and install the dependencies via:

python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Development

To start the app in development mode, execute

./run_app_dev.sh

The application will then be available at localhost:5000. You can test the functionality manually using curl, e.g. via

curl localhost:5000/api/v1/path_for_blueprint_x/test

or through the automated tests, by running

pytest

The commands should output

{
  "msg": "I'm the test endpoint from blueprint_x."
}

and

test/test_endpoints.py ....

============= 4 passed in 0.14s ==============

respectively.

To view the API documentation through the Swagger user interface, navivate your browser to localhost:5000/api/docs.

Production

To run the app in production, execute

./run_app_prod.sh

Now the application is served on localhost:8600. To run the automated tests for the production host, use

pytest --host http://localhost:8600